Quote of the Day: the War Against Los Zetas, Mexico’s Drug Cartel Army
Our Quote of the Day comes from a troubling piece in The Global Post about the war across the border against “Los Zetas,” Mexico’s drug cartels’ powerful army:
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Residents of the town of Fresnillo in northeast Mexico cowered in their homes as gunfire rattled between federal police and cartel gunmen on the streets outside.
When the shooting subsided, those brave enough to peer out their doors saw the corpses of nine gunmen sprawled on the concrete.
Police officers said the deaths — which happened Wednesday — were the latest blow against Los Zetas, a psychopath criminal army battling for control of Mexico’s drug trade, and responsible for multiple kidnappings, oil theft and other rackets.
Many in Mexico’s federal police and army consider the Zetas to be the biggest problem in the drug war. They have launched a sustained campaign against them, resulting in hundreds of deaths like those in Fresnillo and thousands of arrests in recent months.
Rival cartels have also attacked the Zetas across the country, piling corpses of alleged members on the streets — such as 35 who were dumped in Veracruz state — and massacring them in prisons.
But despite the onslaught from all sides, the Zetas keep coming back, recruiting more troops and fighting to dominate trafficking from the Texas border deep into Central America.
Go the link and read it in its entirety.
8 Responses to “Quote of the Day: the War Against Los Zetas, Mexico’s Drug Cartel Army”
If we legalized even part of that trade, the money would be gone, and the entire war and the gangs would waste away into obscurity.
But Professor, the moral imperative, the guiding light of our modern faith based political reality, is to not encourage any drug use.
While you are correct, the legalization of the trade would largely reduce the problems we have now with crime, it would lead to large numbers of the population hooked on drugs. In other words it would look a lot like it does now with much less violence and crime.
Remembering where I am and that sarcasm doesn’t go over too well here I must confess that I too believe that we would start to legalize and to get some control over the drug trade.
Prof-
It is not “trade”.
It is murder of our people.
We don’t legalize murder.
No Allen, we haven’t legalized murder, we’ve simply removed the court system from certain transactions (illicit drug purchases). That means that home-made justice becomes the rule of the day, and we get a little taste of anarchy in an otherwise civilized world. It also provides a nice opportunity for organized groups, including our own CIA (remember the Iran-Contra affair?), to make massive amounts of money.
The murder, minor genocide really, is a byproduct of prohibition.
No offense but that’s crap. Did doing away with prohibition somehow automatically end the mafia? And what “trade”. the cartels take money from everyone they can who crosses the border so we should have open borders? They take that money and by weed then ship it across. Am I right in thinking that’s what you want legal? They then take those profits and use them to finance Coke and heroin and other drugs. Should everything be legal? The cartels are like the mafia in Italy and take a piece of almost everything that happens anywhere in Mexico. They also have enough cash that just making something legal is no bar to the cartels being involved no more than Vegas stopped the mob. Legalization will have no major benefit in fighting the cartels for 20 years.
EEllis:”Did doing away with prohibition somehow automatically end the mafia?”
False argument: prohibition never ended, it just changed forms. The mafia simply took their existing infrastructure and used it to sell drugs. The mafia has since branched into computer fraud, so they, and they alone, might be able to survive legalization.
And no, I’m not talking about people trafficking — I’m not sure how that got in there. You’re also throwing up a straw man on the mobs selling drugs across the border: no one’s going to buy from them when they can purchase the goods directly from the producer, or better yet, be the producer.
I was a pharmaceutical chemist. I know what some of these substances can do to people. I know what they ARE doing to people. Meanwhile, we imprison thousands of our citizens for drug-related crimes (maybe a fine and rehab would be better, since it tends to work more than imprisonment).
I am still on the fence on whether or not to legalize the main substances that the cartels sell. It is not an easy choice. Yes, we could legalize them, tax them, regulate the potency (thus make them at least a little safer to take) and use any of the proceeds to treat addicts. When alcohol was legalized (again) in 1933, the number of alcoholics went up, not down–and that was in spite of the reality that most people could get the stuff when it was illegal (and fairly easily at that).
The mafia did not immediately move to drugs. It was not until about 1937 that they started going into the drug trade in a big way. They lived off of gambling, prostitution, abortion and other ‘nefarious’ activities until then (and continued with them as well). It will take a lot to eliminate the monster that is organized crime. I do not believe that legalizing drugs will cripple the criminals into obscurity–but it may be a good start. In the end, doing nothing, or continuing what we are currently doing/not doing is probably not the way to continue.
As I say in one of my books (currently unpublished), “Whenever you have a market for a product, you will have sellers. It’s just common economic sense.”
BS again. Prohibition refers to a specific constitutional amendment, the 18th, that prohibited the “…manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States…” The Twenty-first Amendment ended prohibition. Did that mean there were no State or local regs about selling Alcohol? Of course not, but if you think that will be any different for Weed you need to quit smoking so much of it.
I wasn’t talking about trafficking in particular I was talking about the “toll” that gets charged to cross illegally. near Brownsville it’s $600 to walk yourself across with no help from anyone. If you don’t pay and get caught then you get beat, most likely hospitalized. Obviously the cartels are making money in numerous ways but somehow you thing taking one away will end cartels? My understanding is that weed is 60% of the cartels drug profits. Of course some cartels only make 1/2 their profits from drugs so while it may be a hit nowhere will it put anyone out of business. The cartels are diversified. They steal oil, pirate goods, commit extortion and other rackets.
I don’t have strong feeling about legalizing weed but the idea that it will have some major impact on the cartels and the violence associated with them is absurd.